Pagina's

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Sofilantjes' anniversary blogtour with a blind seam tutorial

This week, Sofilantjes* is celebrating her second anniversary. Looking at
the amount of patterns you would never have guessed she only started
two years ago. Anne is launching with light speed! Therefore I am very
proud to be part of her anniversary blog tour. For the happy occasion I
created two tutorials for you. The first one is showing how to mash up
the Solis* and the Nivalis*. In the second tutorial I show you how do do a
blind seam in jersey without a special blind seam foot. There is also a
giveaway, at the very end of this post. If you use the coupon code
"CELEBRATE" in the Sofilantjes' web shop you get 25% off at checkout
during the blog tour.

Let's start this party with the dress I sewed
for this happy occasion. The day the Solis was launched a member of the
Sofilantjes Sew and Show Facebook group asked if somebody mashed up the
Solis and Nivalis yet. She wrote that she loved the Solis' back, but
that her daughter considered herself to big for circle skirts (and she
did not want to use the pleated version). I was intrigued, and decided
to try it.

The bunny fabric is from
Droomstoffen. This particular fabric is no longer available, but there
is an amazing big selection of black and white fabrics there. Black and
white is the trend, but my kids prefer to have some color in their
clothes. Using monochrome fabric with a color splash is the optimal
solution in that case. I used yellow jersey from Joyfits for the bodice
and the pockets.

Making this
mash up was much easier than I anticipated. If you want to make your own
you will need to copy/cut the neck strap, the back strap, the front
bodice and the back bodice pattern pieces from the Solis. From the
Nivalis you will need both skirt pieces and the front bodice. The neck
strap and back strap can be used without any alterations. I will now
walk you through the mash up steps.

Step 1: Align the front bodices (so one from the Nivalis
and one from the Solis) at the shoulder line and such that the fold
lines (straight line on the left side) are parallel (the fold lines do
not overlap because the Nivalis is slightly wider). If you place the
Solis front at the bottom you can simply draw the Nivalis bottom bodice
curve on the Solis. Cut off the bottom piece and your front bodice for
the mash up is already done. You will end up with the green outline in the picture.

Step 2: To
adjust the back bodice, place the bottom cut off (so what used to part
of the front Solis bodice) on the back bodice such that the bottom is
aligned. Mark the lowest of the two sides and remove the cut off. Draw a
straight line (parallel to the bottom) such that the sides of the
bodice have the same height.

Step 3: The Nivalis is slightly wider so
you will have to make the skirt pieces a bit narrower, to make the
connection between the skirt and bodice possible. My girl does no longer
have a toddler belly, so I simply cut of the difference in width
between the two bodice. I hope the picture speaks more than a 1000
words. If not please ask. Use your newly formed pattern pieces to cut your fabric and follow the instructions of the Solis for the construction.

Now
for the second tutorial, the blind seam in jersey. In the last few
weeks this has become my favorite jersey hemming method. I use it for
all kind of hems, but the method is especially great for curves which
are usually hard in Jersey.

Step
1: Folding the fabric. Follow the steps in the pictures, I have no
better way to explain this. She succeeded with them, so I hope this
means that they clearly show the folding method. I fold such that the
end is just 1 cm wide. You could choose to give yourself some more work
space and cut off close to stitches in the end. I take a width of the
double layer of about 1.5 to 2 cm. This means that in the end my entire
seam will be about 2.5 to 3 cm high. I advice to practice and you will
quickly see how much working space you need/like.

Step
2: Sewing. Find the stretch blind seam stitch on your machine. The idea
behind it is a small zigzag combined with a big zigzag. Your machine
will do a few small zigzag stitches on the narrow single layer and one
big zigzag that catches the double layer, then it goes back to small
zigzag stitches again. the easiest way to understand it is looking at
this picture of the finished stitches.

For this tutorial I used
the default setting of my Pfaff 3.0 which resulted in a relatively big
visible stitch. For the mash up dress I changed the settings such that
the difference between the big and small zigzag was less. The stitches
are much more hidden this way. I advice you to play around a bit. My
Pfaff makes a small extra stitch just before the big zigzag comes, which
is great for preparing for the big stitch.

Okay now for the give away!
On the picture you can see all the sponsors of the tour and you can fill
in the rafflecopter to win both patterns and fabric (you can scroll
through all the gifts by pressing the dots at the top of the
rafflecopter. In the Sofilantjes Sew and Show Facebook group there are
even more options to win patterns and fabric, check out the scavenger
hunt instructions there. My own give away from last week is still active
for two days, so you might also want to try your luck for two meter of
jersey fabric. Like I said at the beginning of the post you can use the
coupon code "CELEBRATE" in the Sofilantjes' web shop* to get 25% off at
checkout during the blog tour.

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer
(although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose
something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian). If you
buy anything through my affiliate links (*), I get a small commission
(the price stays the same for you), I am very grateful for everything
that feeds my fabric addiction.

About me

I am a Dutch mother of four (three girls and one boy) and an academic. I love to create and use this blog to share my creations with the world. I knit, crochet, sew, bake etc. and many of those skills I learned from bloggers around the globe. I hope you like reading about my creative adventures and that they may inspire you.